# Volume 6: The Codex of Realm
## Chapter 11: The Death of a Universe
I. The Encounter at the Gate
The walk to the High Castle felt like a funeral procession. Beside Null, Kai was unusually quiet; the "Errors" were flashing so violently in Null's vision that he was walking through a world of digital static and blood-red warnings.
There, at the entrance, sat Lucifer Morningstar.
He didn't look like a demon. He looked like a god of old. His snow-white hair reached his wrists, and his white robes were so pristine they seemed to glow. He didn't look up from his book at first. He just flipped a page with a slender finger.
"You're late," Lucifer said.
Null stopped. His humanity was mostly gone, but his body the physical vesse remembered fear. It was a biological terror that bypassed the mind.
"What... are you?" Null's voice cracked through the static.
"I am nothing more than the creator of the void," Lucifer said, closing his book with a soft thud. "Or should I say... the Father of Lies."
A faint, red aura began to leak from Lucifer's skin. It was thin, but the weight of it was so immense that Kai collapsed instantly, his lungs unable to pull oxygen from an atmosphere ruled by the Morningstar. Null quickly placed a Healing Seal on his friend. "Rest well," he whispered.
"Let's dance, shall we?" Lucifer lifted a finger. A beam of red Hellfire shot out, aiming directly for Null's skull.
II. The Nanosecond Arrival
Miles away, Fang felt a psychic spike that nearly split his mind. *"Damnit... who could he be facing right now?!"*
In a split of a nanosecond, Fang vanished. To the observers at the camp, it looked like he never moved; he left behind a perfect afterimage. But in reality, he was already miles away, landing in front of Null just as the red beam arrived.
Fang's eyes widened in pure, ancestral horror. He remembered this man. He remembered when he was a Boss in the Wonder World he remembered Lucifer appearing like a ghost and slaughtering every entity in his path.
"Null... run... right... now," Fang rasped, his voice shallow.
Lucifer stood up, a cruel smirk playing on his lips. "Oh, I remember you. You were a Boss in the Wonder World. What is a mere boss doing here?"
III. The Birth of Soren
"FUSE NOW!" Null screamed.
Time slowed to a crawl. Fang didn't hesitate; he dissolved into a liquid obsidian form, his ancient mass being absorbed into Null's chest.
[SENSORY OVERLOAD: SOREN AWAKENED]
Soren stood in the wreckage of the bridge. His hair was long and flowing, black at the roots and fading into a ghostly white at the tips. His eyes were inverted white irises swimming in a sea of pure black. A dragon's tail thrashed behind him, and dark scales armored his skin. He gripped a scythe made of solidified darkness, fueled by the massive 3-year Mana pool.
Lucifer's smirk widened. He threw a punch so hard it shattered the "Time Slowing" effect, sending Soren flying. "Let's not damage the King's home. Let's dance elsewhere."
IV. The Graveyard of Stars
They materialized in a different universe a place of vibrant planets and teeming life. Lucifer instantly Copied Soren's scythe, and the sky became a mess of clashing shadows.
"We need to fight seriously, Fang," Null's mind-voice echoed.
Soren switched his scythe for a blade, moving with the UI-precision of his 360° vision. He managed to graze Lucifer's cheek, drawing a single drop of blood. It healed before it could even hit the floor. Lucifer responded with a blow to Soren's gut that nearly ended the fight right there.
But Soren didn't stop. He unleashed a flurry of copies, his dark blades stabbing into Lucifer's back over and over. They healed, but the white robes were now a tattered, bloody mess.
"You brat," Lucifer hissed, his calm finally breaking. "You ruined my favorite robe."
V. The Lesson of Satan
Lucifer multiplied. A thousand copies of the Father of Lies surrounded Soren. Soren's shadow clothing was disintegrating from the heat of his own output. He focused Mana into his left leg and swung a kick that turned the clones into dust.
But Lucifer was still there, heavily wounded but laughing. Soren prepared to kill, but then, a memory from the Bloody Sea resurfaced. The voice of Satan echoed in his mind.
> "Kid... you like to stop halfway. When you fight my Master, you use everything. A prime user lasts a week. You? You have three years. Don't stop halfway. Use half of your entire pool in one go. That's how I almost killed ****..."
Soren stopped holding back. He charged his right leg with eighteen months of concentrated Mana.
He threw the kick.
It wasn't just a strike; it was an execution. The kick didn't just hit Lucifer it killed the universe. Planets cracked like glass. The stars emitting brightly and died as the space-time fabric was torn to shreds. A Big Bang in reverse.
When the light cleared, the universe was a graveyard. Lucifer was reduced to a floating head and a spine.
"Your... INSANELY STRONG, KID! HAHAHA!" Lucifer's head cackled in the void. "You killed everyone in this universe just to hit me!"
"I can revive them later," Soren growled, his voice a fusion of Null and Fang. "I'm going to kill you first."
VI. The Reality Kick
Soren grabbed Lucifer's head and flew through the dying husks of planets, smashing the Father of Lies through mountains of rock. But Lucifer wouldn't die. He summoned an army of demons from the Void to swarm Soren.
Soren's body was overheating, his skin glowing red-hot. He only had about a year of Mana left. But then, he realized: the universe he had killed was now pitch black.
Darkness was his power.
The Void began to flow into Soren, restoring his pool as he absorbed the death of the cosmos. He charged his leg one final time. The air around him distorted.
"REALITY KICK!"
The strike shook every parallel universe in existence. The demon army was vaporized instantly. Lucifer, drifting in the lonely space as his torso began to slowly regrow, felt a genuine chill.
"I can't see him... but I can sense him," Lucifer whispered as a leg began to sprout from his mangled form. "Which beast... is this kid?"
[Chapter end]